At the Center

NSA Revelations

Monday, Aug. 12, 2013

In an article for USA Today, Internet Ethics Program Director Irina Raicu reflects on NSA surveillance from the point of view of someone who grew up in Communist Romania, where everyone assumed that the government was spying on individuals. She writes:

It goes without saying that our government is nothing like the Romanian or Cuban governments that set their secret services on their own citizens. And many of us are perfectly willing to countenance data mining by the NSA, on the theory that its purported benefits for national security provide the greatest good for the greatest number. In this context, though, we might remember the words of Supreme Court Justice Brandeis, who famously wrote, "Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born of freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding."